Today is the feast of Saint Sebastian, a Roman saint martyred in c. 288 AD and venerated in the Christian church. Sebastian was born in Gaul (Roman-occupied France), moving to Rome in c. 283 AD to join the Roman army, where he served under the Emperor Diocletian. He kept his Christianity a secret to avoid persecution, while quietly converting many of his fellow soldiers. Once discovered, he was ordered to be killed by arrows. The archers left him for dead, but a Christian widow nursed him back to health. He then presented himself before Diocletian, who condemned him to death by beating. His body, thrown into a sewer, was found by another pious woman, who dreamed that Sebastian told her to bury his remains near the Roman catacombs. His relics are supposedly buried in the Basilica of San Sebastiano in Rome, a central site for his veneration. He is the patron saint of archers and athletes, and was also venerated during the Middle Ages as a protector from the Bubonic plague. Sebastian’s martrydom was a favourite subject of Renaissance artists, including Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna, Perugino and El Greco. The saint is typically depicted as a beautiful adolescent man bound and stripped near-naked, smiling orgasmically as he is pierced by arrows. Unsurprisingly, the homoeroticism of these images has led to speculation about the homosexuality of the artists who depicted him. In the Victorian era, Sebastian’s name and image became synonymous with male homosexual culture. Chief among the cult of Sebastian was gay playwright Oscar Wilde, who renamed himself “Sebastian Melmoth” following his release from prison for homosexual offences. Sebastian’s position as a queer icon was cemented in Derek Jarman‘s 1976 film Sebastiane, an expressly homoerotic telling of the saint’s martyrdom. In Jarman’s version, Sebastian intervenes to stop one of Diocletian’s male lover-slaves being murdered, and is exiled to a remote outpost, where he sublimates his own desires for his fellow soldiers. He becomes the object of the garrison commander’s lust, who orders him to be put to death partially for rejecting his advances. The film was notable for being performed entirely in Latin, its free-range full-frontal nudity and graphic gay sex scenes.